[MD] MOQ is good. What is it good for?

[Andre Broersen]

John M to Andre:
The MOQ isn't a living, dynamic entity.  It is a static intellectual pattern.  It was made at a point in time by one person, in the midst of his own unique circumstances

Andre:
As I said to you privately John, it is risky to suggest, as you do above, that Pirsig’s MOQ is a personal metaphysical account of his life and perspective. The MoQ is trans-personal…it was presented to Pirsig dynamically as was Gautama’s answer to suffering and, for Jesus his relationship to God ( which wash’t a relationship at all).

John M:
But it doesn't fit mine, so I try to bend it into something I can use, and I get chastised by some in this forum
for doing that.

Andre:
Yes, that is making something trans-personal into making something personal. You need to get tapped on the fingers for that because you are making something universal into something personal. Which is fine but until you have reached the moon (so to speak), until you have reached the universal perspective ( as I think the MOQ is representing) all you do is contorting, misconstruing,  manipulating, controlling and partial-izing in a self-striving, self-centered  way. 

John M:
The MOQ "points to the moon".  That makes sense, and I was trying to use it to get there.

Andre:
Where are you trying to get? Also in Zen Buddhism this is an analogy. What D.T Suzuki in his Essays in Zen Buddhism has to say about this analogy is this:¨ By personal experience it is meant to get at the fact  at the first hand and not through any intermediary, whatever this may be”. (p 19) 
Pirsig has devised the MOQ around everyday experience as the first and only true measuring stick for anything good. So has James and countless others. If you need faith or worship to sustain something you may have experienced then all I can suggest is to throw them overboard. Faith and worship are not a measure of truth.

Here’s the rub John…you do not need to get anywhere. You spoke of the liturgy and faith and worship. Jesus is attributed to have said to his apostles, when they asked the very same question ( different culture, different analogy) that the kingdom of heaven is right here yet men do not see it. It is not somewhere over there John… it is right here…you are walking in it, it is closer to you than your nose. 

If the MOQ is a monism then where else can it be? 

John M:
They are saying, and the MOQ seems to be saying, "There is no moon. 

Andre:
Perhaps you can see this as the Zennie gateless gate analogy John. An endpoint that you thought was there but once trespassed realizing it was never there in the first place, it was all in your imagination…the endpoint as well as the gate…there is no conclusion but to realize this…ah. 

What was it that Gautama Buddha said when people asked him what he had gained upon his awakening? He sai nothing, absolutely nothing!!!

Brilliant and very very simple.